The Odds

The asshole friend gets his entire education at NYU Tisch School of the Arts paid for by his mom. He knew how to use the special effects software they used in Lord of the Rings in high school, he taught himself. Just like he taught himself triple rack focuses, lighting, camera work, professional grade photography, advanced piano, editing, some screenplay writing, audio design. Whiz. Wins hundreds of dollars in high school in film festivals across the country. As a kid. Goes to college. Graduates. Gets complimented by a famous indie director when he shows him a film he made.

Ten years later his presence is gone. The blog he used to maintain has no posts for years. His IMDB page doesn't have any new films listed. First for two years. Then three. Then four. The program he made to help women on campus immediately report unsafe situations is barely downloaded by anyone, languishing at the end of the Google Play store and the Apple store. Richard Dawkins, the narrator for a game he once made, a raging sexist Islamophobe. He texts me one day tacitly admitting he's... depressed? In a bad place? Years of work for nothing. Now living in New York. I'm sure it's expensive. He could move back home, but his parents are long ago divorced and hate each other, and most of his friends are spread across the state or country.

My mom told me a long time ago if she could go back in time she would go to college and become a nurse to help people. She couldn't go to college because she grew up poor. Nobody in my family has a college degree. That includes my extended family; grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. All the same lacking piece of paper. My cousins girlfriend is in med school and wants to work in a hospital. He (cousin) works in a factory and his parents, who own two houses, let him live in their older, smaller one for free. That uncle (his father) makes really good money, well into 6 figure incomes. He hates women and black people. Most people in their family do to some extent.

The present author could, as originally envisioned, self-publish a collection of poor short stories that have now been rejected from all 40+ attempts to get them published. But to do so would require hundreds of dollars, tying a full name to an existence that family could dig up, and using a medium (Amazon publishing) that would get even more meager views than this blog does. Of course, the benefit would be the 0.0000000000001% odds that it gets lucky and catches on, but such odds are so low that, as enumerated in a bunch of pithy, unglamorous, poorly written blog posts over the last several years, perhaps life is about knowing when to give up on them, and use that $300 dollars commissioning a cover would take on covering 3 months worth of insurance so that the present author can panic a bit less about money for 90 more days. If that's not worth the price of admission, well, then who knows what is.